Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, as we entered 2026, we're going to look ahead of what is likely to be another crucial

and turbulent year in British politics and give you the listeners the inside track and what to look out for over the next 12 months and guide you through the big stories ahead.

So to help navigate you through all that, I'm delighted to say we're joined by LBC's political editor and returning guest, Natasha Clark.

And alongside her is my colleague Adam Payne, editor here at Pole Home.

So there's a lot of stuff to talk about, but I think a lot of it does hinge essentially on the big political events coming in 2026, which is the local elections in May. I think it's going to be all 32 London boroughs, all metropolitan boroughs, 18 unitries, six county councils, 50 district councils, and six directly elected mayors. So an awful lot of stuff,

an awful lot of pageant of democracy. We've also got elections to the Senate in Wales and the

Scottish Parliament. How important do you think, Tasha, is that we'll start off with the

government's focus. How much is focused around how they do and how much the planning over the next

four or five months is all based on what's going to happen in May? I think everybody in UK politics is going to be all focused on May for the first. I mean, to be fair, every year, we always are, but arguably this is a very, very key moment. I think obviously last year, if you look back to the local elections that we did have, reform of course, did very well. And that kind of confirmed, can they actually

do it? Can they actually win local elections? And they won two of those mayoralties and took

control of 10 local authorities. Exactly. And they won the run corn by election by just six votes,

you know, having yet another MP. And despite sort of a little bit of turbulence that we've had in

reform over the last year, those May elections absolutely were two things. Firstly, you know, showing like you say, that reform can do it. But secondly, it gives Labour the opportunity. And I think we'll see a lot more of this in the run up to May, where they will be really focusing on what is happening in those reform councils. We've seen already quite a lot of turbulence stories coming out of it, especially Kent County Council. Yeah, where I live in Kent.

It's been the airs in the Lundra of turbulence there. Yeah. We've been at the heart of some of that chaos. And I think if you are the Labour government and you're thinking about how we can, we can capitalize and how we can get ahead of May, which is going to be difficult for the Labour Party and for the Tories, mainly, you will be looking to shine a spotlight on reform.

What have they done in the last year? Have they made services better or worse? Is Townsendax in those areas going to go up or not? I'm sure it's pretty going to go up everywhere. But that's sort of going to be, I think, a focus for this Labour government. What have we done in this Labour government nationally over the last year and a half that we can point to? Despite West Streeting saying, He doesn't think that shopping lists of what Labour have done well is a good idea. I think Kirstama clearly does. You heard it at the final PMQs of the year, didn't he? Just listing off all the good things he thinks Labour have done. And then secondly, I'll say focusing that spotlight on reform and how that local government, that could be national government in a couple of years, if you're not careful, guys. Yeah, exactly. And Adam, from the other point of view, the focus on Labor itself, obviously, is how they're going to do. We saw in the Senate by-election last October how badly they did their seat they'd won for the last 25 years. They came a distant third. There are polls suggesting they're going to do very badly in the Senate elections

and also the SNP having some of a resurgence up in Scotland. How is that kind of that focus

on the government and on Labor, how they're going to do in May? Is that essentially going to

colour a lawful lot of what we talk about over 2026? I think the buildup to a set of local elections

is usually pretty long. This one is going to be so long.

We've been talking about these local elections

and how pivotal they could be for months prior to this.

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